


Apple and Olive

by sibley (ferns)



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Canon Bisexual Character, Canon Trans Character, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, ambiguously romantic, autistic brainy, friends who deal with hate crimes together stay together, jewish nia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-08-09 01:18:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16440350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/sibley
Summary: Odds and ends about the strange friendship between CatCo's newest precognitive reporter (and her cat, Gloves) and a 12th level intellect from Colu.





	1. Friends

**Author's Note:**

> I guess if you wanted to read this as romantic, you could, it's just not how I'm writing it. The hate crime Nia and Brainy met through is brought up a few times, but this is generally going to be short filler stories about, well, friendship. These two are really the only reason I'm watching Supergirl, so it's nice to see that they're going to be (at least) friends.

“How can you _eat_ that?” Nia asks, dropping her bag down on the floor.

Brainy (she’s _sure_ that’s what he said when he introduced himself, okay, he definitely did _not_ say ‘Barney’ like every other human being on the planet including the pizza delivery man seems to have misheard) jumps a little at the sound and blinks at her slowly like a cat would. “I’m not eating anything.”

“Apple and olive pizza.” She sits down on the floor next to him and opens the box containing said horrible affront to the word pizza. He accepts the box and Nia opens her own-plain cheese, thank you very much. “How can you touch that stuff?”

“It’s my favorite.” Brainy stuffs a piece into his mouth. He looks a lot less like he’s actually eating it and more like he’s just holding the slice in his mouth. Nia’s upper lip twitches, but she can tell that he still looks somewhat uncomfortable. It’s not the first time they’ve met up like this, but it is the first time he’s been to her house-maybe that’s why? Or maybe it’s the way Gloves is staring at him with narrowed green-yellow from across the room, orange tabby tail twitching.

“You’re not allergic to cats, are you?”

“You have asked that eight and a half times since you have met me,” he comments, voice mild as he reaches for another piece of his awful pizza. “James cut you off the last time.”

Nia sighs. “I know, I know. I remembered.” On cue, Gloves pads across the room to shove her face into Nia’s armpit from behind. She purrs when Nia maneuvers to rub between her ears down onto her striped forehead, and something else occurs to her. Another reason he might be uncomfortable. “You can turn off your image inducer, if you want. It’s my house. Nobody can see you.”

Brainy tilts his head. Nia remembers when she was little, one of her neighbors had a conure. He had trained it to do tricks on command, but it was more interesting to her when it had been playing on its own terms. He moved like that bird. Jerky movements and head twists. But at least the conure had seemed comfortable in its own feathers. “You and Gloves don’t mind?”

“I don’t think she’ll care,” Nia says as she kisses the top of Gloves’ head, “and I know I won’t. My apartment is high enough up that nobody will be able to see you from outside, either, so you don’t have to worry about that.”

There’s one last twitch, and then he switches the image inducer off. Since he’s not in any danger of having his skull smashed in while he’s in Nia’s apartment, she can actually get something of a good look at him, instead of just a flash of blue and the image of so much blood stained onto her brain. Gloves twitches her whiskers and hides a little behind Nia, but doesn’t do much else.

Nia eats her first slice of pizza. Brainy doesn’t take his eyes off her the whole time. “What are you going to ask me first?” He says finally. So quietly she’s pretty sure he’s talking to himself, he mumbles, “Thirty-two percent chance of asking about my discs, twenty-one percent chance of asking about the pizza again, forty-two percent-”

“Why do you calculate everything?” Nia asks before he potentially has a chance to beat her to it.

His fingers twitch. “I have to process data. It must be accounted for.”

“...Okay.” She remembers what they talked about last they got together and changes the subject. “How’s your friend Alex?”

“She still has not found a suitable partner,” Brainy answers. Nia wonders if he sounds a little relieved that they’re talking about someone else now or if it’s just her imagination. “None of her potential matches have had the right combination of personality traits for her to be satisfied. I don’t suppose you…”

“Sorry. I don’t do blind dates. I’m much better with people who I actually get to know beforehand. And I guess I’m kinda waiting to settle in with CatCo before I start dating again.” Nia starts on her second slice. Brainy’s already almost done with his whole pizza, which is weird because she hasn’t really seen him chew. Or swallow. But he must be, right? “What about you? Any… Suitable partners?”

“...No. Back, um, at home, there are some people who could be potential partners.” He doesn’t specify whether home is the planet he came from or the city he may have been living in before moving to National. He squints at her as he says, “But I am not there now. And they are not here. None of my friends are.”

Gloves looks like she’s eyeing Nia’s still mostly full pizza box and she picks her up to move her out of the way so she can’t make a dash for a box-sitting. “I’m sorry. I know how awful it is to leave your friends and family behind. But it sounds like you still have friends. You have Alex, and you have me and Gloves. That’s three friends! I only have two friends now that I’ve moved.”

“Gloves, Kara, James, and me. Four friends,” Brainy corrects.

“Ms. Danvers and Mr. Olsen are nice, but they’re my bosses. That’s not the same as having real friends. It’s okay.” Nia shrugs, then laughs a little. It’s not a very nice laugh. More scared than anything else. “Maybe I’ll get involved in some more hate crimes, just to make some more friends.”

“I think you will end up with many friends, Nia Nal.” He says softly, digging his fingernails into the cardboard lid of the pizza box. Nia winces at the sound and he stops, switching to simply drumming his fingers on the lid instead of scratching. “It might not be today. Or tomorrow. But you will have friends. More than just Gloves. And me.”

“Thank you.” Nia pushes her box and the remainder of her pizza over to him. “Well, I’m already full. I don’t know how you can eat an entire pizza. Do you want the rest of mine?”

Brainy shakes his head, still drumming on the box. “It’s wrong,” he says somewhat apologetically. “It doesn’t feel right in my mouth. You should save it for later. Alex says pizza is at its optimum taste value when cold.”

Nia shrugs and closes the box all the way, which frees Gloves to stand on top of it. It’s evidently not as good as sitting in it, which she makes clear to Nia by  _mrrowing_ at her, but it appears satisfactory enough. “I know you’re not really mad, you have other boxes,” Nia scolds, kissing Gloves' perfect little ears. She looks at Brainy and pushes away her dream of him with his skull beaten in by a metal bat. “So, uh… Movie?”


	2. Flight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The pizza parlor incident gets brought up again, but again-a mention is about as bad as it gets. Brainy also mentions XS, and when he does he's specifically talking about Jenni Ognats.

“What do you mean, you don’t love flying? If I could fly I would never come back down.” Nia gapes at Brainy despite the way it allows the cold air to sting her teeth. “It must be  _ so  _ amazing.”

“It is… An efficient way to travel?” He offers, shoving his hands in his pockets. He had decided at some point to wear a purple scarf, and is currently rubbing the material back and forth slowly over his lips. “It is much quicker than walking. Being carried by XS on the ground is faster than both, but she is… Excitable, and she likes to take detours.”

Nia doesn’t ask who XS is. She’s just another person from Brainy’s ‘home’ that he hasn’t told her much about yet, even though XS evidently doesn’t warrant the almost (but not quite, since he’s still not very good at speech inflection) excited and longing tone that ‘Andromeda’ and ‘Lyle’ got. “You don’t  _ ever  _ fly for fun? Not even…” She lowers her voice. “Here on Earth?”

Technically, they’ve been talking about Brainy being able to  _ fly  _ because of that ring he wears completely openly in this public coffeeshop for at least six minutes now, and the place is mostly populated by aliens anyway, but that doesn’t mean she’s not still worried. Of  _ course  _ if someone threatened her friend she would stand up for him, but that doesn’t mean they should wait for someone to attack him again.

“...No.” He hesitates. Presses his hands together and massages the palm of his hand with his thumb. “But if you would  _ like  _ to fly…”

It takes her a second to realize what he’s saying. Nia’s brain almost short circuits. As it is, her hands shake and she has to put her bagel down to bite her thumbnail excitedly. (It’s not even a very  _ good  _ bagel, more like sandwich bread than anything. Nia’s Bubbe would  _ strongly  _ disapprove. There must not be very many Jewish aliens.) “Are you serious?”

Brainy nods and holds a strawberry in his mouth, leaves and all. “It would be something like what friends do in Winn’s movies,” he says seriously. He would know, he watched a  _ lot  _ of those movies for research purposes. “They take their friends to nice places and do nice things for them. You are Sloane. I am Ferris. Except I would value Cameron’s mental and physical well-being so that he would be able to perform at optimal levels instead of dragging him around Chicago.”

“That’s very nice of you.” Nia tries to take another bite of bagel but she’s too excited to chew and ends up having to put it down again. “Like, today? My lunch break will be over soon, Mr. Olsen is nice but I don’t think he would like it if I was late especially since I only just started, but-”

“This Sunday. Alex does not have anything planned and you do not work on Sundays or have any religious obligations that you fulfill.” Brainy bobs his head, satisfied, and eats another strawberry. “Wear something to cover your face. We will be far away from people but I do not want you to be seen by anyone. It would… Not be good. You could get hurt.”

Nia presses her knuckles together and tries to stop smiling since it’s kind of making her face hurt as she stands up, taking her plate with her. She really  _ is  _ going to be late if she’s not fast. “I can’t  _ wait.” _ When Brainy cocks his head and opens his mouth, she shakes her head. “I know I’ll have to. Just an expression.”

* * *

Brainy eyes her. “You’re very shiny today.”

Nia preens a little. She dressed like that on purpose. Clothing makes a statement, and she stands out like piece of tinfoil in a desert. Blue holographic leggings and a sequined shirt may be much more, well,  _ tween  _ than a grown woman should be dressing, but they’re comfortable and they’re not her usual style (flat colors and the occasional print for an accent). If someone dresses differently, you’re less likely to recognize them. “I know.”

Brainy shrugs, looking somewhere over her shoulder. He does that a lot. Nia thinks it’s easier for him than looking at faces is. “Did you-”

“Boom.” Nia holds up her homemade mask. A bit of padding with some holographic fabric-what? She might as well go all out with it-stretched around it that covers the bottom of her face and ties behind her head. “How’s it look?”

“Shiny.” He follows her as they head toward the bus stop, leaving the CatCo building behind them. When they pass the block the pizza parlor is on, Nia wraps her arm around his shoulder and pulls him with her, head up as fresh fear spikes in her throat.

She got lucky. She knows she got lucky. If those men had realized that she wasn’t a cisgender woman-her vision was of an alien she didn’t yet know being beaten, even if they didn’t land a hit while she was there. But it’s so easy to picture herself… No. That’s a bad train of thought. Nia shoves it under the bad trains of thought rug in her brain and jumps on it a few times.

Since Brainy doesn’t seem to have taken a bus before, Nia handles the transactions, sitting at the back and pulling her earbuds out of her pocket. After a moment’s hesitation, she offers one of them to Brainy, and he copies her when she sticks it in her ear. He leans against her shoulder when she puts on a pop song she likes and plays Tetris.

They get off as close as they can get to the edge of the city, since this particular bus doesn’t leave it. Nia’s skin feels like it’s going to crawl straight off her body, that’s how excited she is. Flying is a child’s fantasy or a good dream, it’s not…  _ Real.  _ Her heart pounds in her throat and she hugs herself, trying not to smile too wide.

There’s a little cluster of trees that Brainy leads her through-he must have mapped this all out beforehand. Once they’re all the way through the copse and thus suitably hidden, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a ring to match his. “Valor gave this to…” He looks at her and frowns. “Another friend of mine. Not you or Alex or Gloves. She said I could borrow it for today.”

Nia doesn’t care about this mysterious new friend. She can get details later. For now… For now all she can think about is that she’s going to fly. She accepts the ring and watches him demonstrate how to put it on, which doesn’t look like it really needs a demonstration.

“Don’t turn it unless you’re in danger,” he says. “It will send a-” He stops again, looking kind of lost.  _ It would send a distress signal back to Legion headquarters and to everyone else with a ring.  _ But there  _ are  _ no Legion headquarters, not in this time, are there? There’s no other Legion members in this time, are there? He shouldn’t be explaining this like he’s heard Taine do to new Legionnaires. “Don’t turn it. The ring responds to mental commands, you don’t need to physically do anything except make your body more streamlined.”

Brainy takes her hand for balance, and Nia, concentrating, takes a step forward and  _ up. _


	3. Names

After what feels like the millionth time hearing a barista or a delivery man or a complete stranger call Brainy ‘Barney’, Nia feels like it might be time for her to reevaluate if she’s actually hearing him correctly or if all of these strangers are actually right.

When he gets back with coffee, she squints angrily at the name on his cup (she’s very used to her own name being misspelled as ‘Mia’ and ‘Nina’, so she doesn’t even flinch at her own ‘Mina’, since the combination was bound to happen eventually). “What  _ is  _ your name?”

“Querl Dox,” he says, and, well, that doesn’t sound like  _ any  _ of the names Nia’s either called him or heard other people call him. Hmm. “My friends call me Brainy, because I was assigned the title of Brainiac-5. Barney is my pizza-” He catches himself. “Barney is my coffee name.”

“Well, what do you want me to call you?” Nia sips her coffee. It’s easy to forget her job when she’s here. Not that she wants to forget it. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime, even if she can’t take every assignment she wants.

He taps his fingers twice against the cardboard ring around his paper cup. “You can call me whatever you want. It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters!” Nia stares at him. Her knuckles go white around her cup of coffee with surprise. “Names are  _ important.  _ Being able to choose what other people can call you is the most important thing in the world.”

“Why?” Honest curiosity.

Nia makes a half movement with her hand. Jagged. Her thumb touches her temple. “Because…” She breathes out, shaky. “It’s power. Names have power, you know? Like, in fairy tales, when you tell your name to someone and then they can control you. It’s like that. It’s  _ special  _ to be able to pick what other people call you and make it perfect.” That’s all she can really say, isn’t it? “It’s… It’s special.”

“Like clothing?” Of course he remembers Nia’s job. How much she loves it. And why it’s so important to her. Well, not  _ completely  _ why, but she explained that she likes the idea that clothing and what you choose to do with your body is the first step to some kind of transformation, moving from one stage of life to another, signaling your beliefs to the world.

Nia smiles, relieved that he understands at least a little bit. “Like clothing,” she agrees. “Little things like that are important. They’re how we recognize each other, and they’re how we know ourselves from who we used to be, or who other people are.”

“Oh.” He thinks he might understand. Names aren’t quite as important to him as they are to her, useful formality and nothing more. People are the sum of their parts, the code that makes them up, like how Nia is a string of ones and zeros that means  _ friend,  _ that means she smiles like sunshine and doesn’t stop him from letting out excess energy. Names are designations and titles more than they are identities.

“So,” Nia prompts, “what do you want me to call you? Brainy, or Brainiac-5, or Querl Dox, or Barney, or something totally different? You can pick anything.”

“You can keep calling me Brainy,” he decides. “Like you have been. That’s what my friends call me.” Brainy hesitates for just a little bit too long, rubbing his knuckles on the tablecloth. They always sit in the same spot when they come here. “If you wanted,” he says, much, much quieter than before, even though this is an alien café and it’s fine for them to speak freely, “sometimes you could call me Querl.”

She smiles again and takes a small sip of her coffee. That’s good to hear. “Okay, Querl. Thanks for telling me and clearing that up. I thought I was going crazy because everybody was calling you Barney.”

_ Querl.  _ She likes that name. It sounds like… Water, or fish, or something. Nia’s not a poet or even a particularly avid writer or anything close, but sometimes names are perfect for people, or perfect to say, and that’s part of why she picked her own over the others she tried. Like she’s been saying, names are  _ important.  _ For more than just identification from others.

“No.” The smile he gives her is hesitant. Semi relieved. “I think I just have many names, compared to most people.”

“I know how that feels,” Nia hums quietly. Technically, she’s just got the three names (first, middle, last) now, but she’s cycled through too many to count.

He doesn’t ask, and she doesn’t explain. She doesn’t need to.


	4. Gift

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is pretty much the only fic where I've actually given myself permission to have shorter chapters. 
> 
> If you search "bumpy tangle toys" you'll get an idea of what Nia gave Querl :)

“What’s that?” 

Brainy looks up. “What?”

Alex nods to the object in his hands. It looks like a bumpy plastic loop that he’d twisted around his fingers. “That. Where’d you get it?”

“It’s not a weapon,” he says, answering the question she didn’t verbally ask. Her shoulders relax some. “There’s no chance of explosion. Nia gave it to me. She said she thought I would like it.”

“Ah.” Alex smiles and taps the pen she’s holding between her fingers against the desktop once. Brainy restrains himself from telling her that she needs to do it a second time at  _ least  _ or it won’t work. “You’ve been spending a lot of time with her lately.”

“She’s my friend.” The tangle vanishes into his pocket. “You said yourself that building emotional bonds to people in this time will help me feel better about being here.”

“Yes, I did. I’m glad you’re making friends, I’m just surprised.” Honestly, Alex had been, ah, concerned about Brainy’s ability to do just that. Of course there was rising racist sentiment, but Brainy was also somewhat… Okay, he was extremely difficult to get along with. Hadn’t the other Legion members said he was notoriously antisocial? Of  _ course  _ Alex wanted him to have friends, and they’d certainly do him some good, but she hadn’t really expected him to go out and  _ make  _ them.

He looks at her a little suspiciously and then shrugs, looking at paperwork in her hand and sighing as she laughs and rolls the pen toward him for him to fill it all out. She doesn’t say anything else about Nia, and he’s more grateful than he was expecting himself to be. It’s weird, but he thinks he likes having a friend that’s just  _ his.  _ Someone outside of this stuff, or as outside as she can get, considering what he knows of her and how they met.

Alex doesn’t say anything else that day about Nia, or about what he was playing with, and he doesn’t offer up any more information on the subject, though she does notice that he makes little movements toward the pocket he put the object in when there’s a particularly loud buzz of noise or rush of agents. She kind of wants to know what it’s  _ really  _ for, then. Harmless, obviously, but…

An alarm chimes from across the room and Alex finds herself over there before she even knows what she’s doing or where she’s going. She can find out later. Right now they need to focus on the emergency. There will be time to talk to him later, there always is.

* * *

“That’s new.” 

Nia stifles a shout of surprise but can’t stop herself from jumping in place. Kara laughs from behind her and Nia presses her hand against her heart. A small part of her wants to do jazz hands and say  _ look, I didn’t fall asleep!  _ but she’s not sure Kara will understand that joke. “You scared me.”

“Sorry.” Kara’s still laughing, but it doesn’t really feel mean like it might have coming from someone else. She pats Nia on the shoulder carefully. Nia’s noticed that she’s always careful when she touches her.. Like she’s worried Nia will break under her hands. She’s not sure if she does it with other people or not. “You must have been really focused. What’re you working on?”

“Mr. Olsen is having me write something about image inducers.” Nia rubs her eyes. It feels like she’s been squinting at the screen forever, even if it was probably only an hour and a half or something. “But I’m almost done, if you need anything from me-”

“Oh, no, I’ll let you get back to work,” Kara promises. “I just noticed your… Um… Cat. It’s new.”

Nia follows her gaze to the stuffed toy cat sitting next to her computer and blushes, avoiding eye contact as her ears grow hot. Kara laughs again at her expression, not unkindly. “It was a gift from a friend of mine. He thought it looked like my cat, Gloves. And my desk was looking kind of empty.”

“Does it actually look like him? Gloves, I mean?” Kara’s eyes are still sparkling with laughter.

Nia nods and pulls up a picture of said perfect angel kitty on her phone, of which there are probably over a thousand, to show her. Both cats were orange tabbies with perfect white mittens on their paws, which had earned Gloves her name. “The resemblance certainly is uncanny.”

“It is!” Kara pats her on the shoulder again, just as controlled as before. Nia doesn’t ask her about it, but she kind of wants to. Her desire to keep her job outweighs her nosiness. “I’ll let you get back to focusing on your work, okay?”

“Alright.” Nia watches her leave. There’s something  _ weird  _ about Ms. Danvers-it’s-okay-to-call-me-Kara. And she’s going to figure it out one of these days. She’s sure of it.


	5. Sweet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Even though I'm not technically writing any of this interaction as romantic, I'm very excited to see how their dynamic plays out in the actual show since it seems like they're going the romance route!

“I thought we could try something new today,” Nia says as Brainy automatically turns to go to their usual alien-run coffeeshop, and his life practically flashes before his eyes.

“New?” He tries not to show how anxious that makes him. New things (well,  _newer_ things. The whole damn timeline is new to him) means new lines to rehearse in his head, and new situations that could go wrong.

“New for you,” Nia amends. “I found it when I first moved here. It’s a pancake place with the best chocolate chip pancakes I’ve ever had, even back home. I thought you might like it. They have coffee if you just wanna get that, you won’t have to change your script or anything if you don’t want to.”

_ That  _ calms him down, enough that he actually lets Nia hook her arm through his as they walk down the street. There’s a little bit of snow falling, but it’s not enough to stick to anything, much to Nia’s disappointment. Brainy doesn’t mind much. Snow is unpredictable, it damages its surroundings and makes them less than optimal for traveling in, especially if you’re flying.

The place isn’t packed, but it’s crowded enough to put both of them on edge. The woman who seats them says cheerfully that she’ll be back in a few minutes to take their drink order, leaving them at a corner table with two seats and a pair of menus. 

Nia gravitates toward the chocolate chip pancakes she mentioned immediately, finding them on the menu exactly where she knew they would be. Even if she gets the same thing every time, it’s still nice to check and make sure it’s still there. Brainy crinkles his nose a little when she orders a hot chocolate (with extra whipped cream) after he orders his coffee, and she does it right back. Hot chocolate is way better than coffee, he’s just bitter from being on the losing side.

Nia orders her pancakes, and Brainy panics and gets a single hard boiled egg.

“You know,” Nia says, after the food has arrived and Brainy has decided to attempt to eat his egg with a fork, “I’ve missed hanging out with you.”

“We saw each other last week,” he points out, chasing the already peeled egg around on his plate. “That wasn’t that long ago.”

“Yeah, but…” Nia shrugs and doesn’t say that a disastrous Thanksgiving at Kara Danvers’ house where they hardly even spoke can be considered a meeting. Or at least that it doesn’t feel like one to her. She shovels a bite of pancake into her mouth. “I don’t know. I like it when it’s just the two of us.” She hesitates. “I swear, that sounded a lot less selfish in my head.”

She’s not  _ jealous  _ of his other friends, she knows she’s not, and it was nice to meet them. She’s still holding back some of her suspicions about Kara, and keeping her brain’s wiggling connection of Brainy’s friend who was gifted a flight ring and everything that’s so  _ strange  _ about her from making that last jump. It’s not her business. It’s  _ not. _

It’s just… Nia likes him. A lot. She likes actually having friends in National City, and as much as Kara and Mr. Olsen say they’re her friends, and as much as she does genuinely like them, they’re her coworkers. Her bosses. Brainy’s not attached to that. He’s one of her only real friends, and probably her only one now that she’s moved. Outside of Gloves, of course, who would hate it if she knew Nia was forgetting her.

Whatever. It’s stupid, anyway. She’s a grown up, she’s not a middle schooler who can’t accept that her friends like to play with other people at recess.

“It doesn’t sound selfish at all,” he says, giving up on impaling his poor hard boiled egg and picking it up to take a real bite, only for it to slip out of his hands and back onto his plate. Brainy stares at it angrily for a good thirty seconds, and Nia tries  _ very  _ hard not to laugh at his woe. “I like…” He thinks. “‘Hanging out’ with you too. Just us and sometimes Gloves. It’s very nice.”

Nia beams at him, seemingly unaware of the large fluff of whipped cream on her nose. Brainy fights the urge to rub it off with his thumb as he finally manages to successfully eat his egg. “I’m glad you understand.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm augustheart on tumblr.


End file.
